From Paul Di Filippo's "THE SPECULATOR" column on The Barnes & Noble Review
This year completes the initial decade
of the twenty-first century -- unless, of course, you are a numerical fussbudget
along the lines of the revered Arthur C. Clarke, and insist on dating the start
of the century to 2001. But tell me truly: does the year 2011 really resonate
with you as an evocative, memorable milestone?
In
any case, the twenty-first century is undeniably the century science fiction
built -- if not in utter hands-on reality (though even that proposition is
debatable, given the inspiration the genre has provided for influential
scientists and geeks), then in the public imagination. Since the birth of genre
SF in 1926, and for almost the next 75 years, simply to set a story in the
third millennium AD was to signify extravagant extrapolation and a futuristic,
far-off milieu when flying cars and food pills would reign -- or dystopia would
prevail. The year 2010 is automatically one of yesterday's tomorrows.
Of
course, as we all now realize, the twenty-first century is proving both more
and less science-fictional than the literature imagined, in strange and perhaps
essentially unpredictable ways. This condition bedevils SF to some extent, as
both its continuing credibility and utility come under question. Some authors
and critics have recently even gone so far as to pronounce the mode deceased. Such
statements regarding the death of SF are eternal. In 1960, for instance, a
famous seminar was conducted under the heading "Who Killed Science
Fiction?"
It
seems fitting, then, at this early juncture in the new millennium, to examine
some recent representative SF books of differing types and check their pulse
for signs of health or illness. Does the genre continue to have new and useful
things to say? Is it still intellectually and narratively interesting? Or is
the genre suffering from a case, as H. G. Wells so direly phrased it, of
"mind at the end of its tether…"?
The Original Anthology: If it's become
cliché to maintain that short stories are the cutting-edge laboratory of
science fiction, it's only because, as with most clichés, a nugget of truth
gleams at the center of the truism. The short form allows quick, timely and
innovative forays into new speculative territories: a big payoff for minimal
author and reader investment.
With
the remaining small band of old-school print magazines in dire financial
straits these days, and online zines stumbling around for a viable business
model, much of the best work at these lengths now occurs in the original
anthology, which trades periodical timeliness for a greater shelf life, the
occasional backing of deep-pockets publishers, and an expanded audience.
One
of the best anthologies of recent vintage is Jetse de Vries's Shine. Its virtues are easy to
enumerate. It offers a clear-eyed theme and unique remit: optimistic,
near-future SF. It features a wide range of voices and styles. Its editor is
young, knowledgeable, energetic, and hip (the anthology was assembled with heavy
reliance on social media sites). On all counts, it's a rousing success, the
very model of a modern project, and points the way toward a healthy future for
SF short stories. All that remains is for the book to rack up some deservedly
healthy sales.
Not
every story in the volume achieves unqualified greatness: a number favor
earnestness over entertainment. They work so seriously to illustrate that there
is hope for humanity that they seem to forget that the reader has to want to
imagine herself enjoying life in the
future, even while facing challenges. That was always the secret of
Heinlein-era SF. This joie de vivre
deficit becomes apparent only when you come to a contrary story such as Gord
Sellar's knockout "Sarging Rasmussen: A Report (by Organic)." Its
high-octane characters and language and devil-may-care attitude cloak serious
issues just as vital as those embedded elsewhere in the book. But it's also a
slavering whirlwind of manic energy, in the mode of the Looney Tunes cartoon
Tasmanian Devil. Others in this admirable vein include Eva Maria Chapman's
"Russian Roulette 2020" and Kay Kenyon's "Castoff World."
The Hot Trend: So long as science
fiction can pinwheel off new movements and manifestos, new fads and fashions,
it seems to me that it remains alive and vibrant. Bandwagons can get
overloaded, stylized, and mob-minded. But then along comes another freshly
painted barouche full of troublemakers to join the long parade.
Steampunk
is hardly a new phenomenon, dating back in its fully codified form some
twenty-five years at least. But as culture watchers know, it's recently
experienced a miraculous rejuvenation. Mark Hodder's debut novel, The
Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, is a remarkably sophisticated and well-executed manifestation of
the sub-genre, showing us that new talent can excavate gold out of the most
well-plumbed mines.
Hodder
has arrayed in his book the full panoply of steampunk riffs: weird machinery,
Victorian cultural attitudes, class hierarchy, the supernatural, famous
historical figures, surrealism and absurdity, amusing fictional sidekicks to
famous personages, and a sense of adventure across a relatively unexplored
globe. Layering this cake with a frosting of mystery, suspense, and time-travel
shenanigans, he has created a compulsively readable romp that recalls the best
of Tim Powers and James Blaylock.
Hodder's
paired protagonists are the explorer Richard Burton and the poet Swinburne. In
the year 1861, they inhabit a timestream in which Queen Victoria's
assassination in 1840 unleashed a realm of oddball steam- and bio-tech. The
legendary boogie-man of the title appears to be a time-traveler intent on
repairing the damaged continuum. Or is he?
Hodder's
prose is stately yet not archaic, and the plot unfolds with a satisfying
cleverness. His descriptions of the era -- a crucial point for any novel that aims
for historical atmosphere -- are palpable, rendering a miasma-shrouded London and
environs. If his book does not precisely build a new wing on the steampunk
mansion, it does polish the banisters brightly and garland the halls gaily,
showing visitors the best of the old manor.
SF from the Literary World: Despite the long (and, let's admit it, fun) tradition of SF writers complaining about "outsiders" from the literary "mainstream" never getting our beloved genre right, the picture is rapidly changing. As science-fictional ideas permeate the culture more and more deeply and widely, writers from MFA programs and The New Yorker, from Granta and Yaddo, prove themselves adept at handling all the riffs of SF in acrobatic and ingenious fashion, often contributing new stylistic angles and perspectives to the field. Case in point: Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.
Yu's
mordantly funny book follows the entertainingly dreary and screwed-up existence
of a time-travel machine repairman named -- Charles Yu! Metafictional Yu's drab
and anomie-filled existence, dominated by his desultory search for his missing
father and his on-off relations with his mother (Mom's chosen to live in a
"Polchinski 630 Hour-Long Reinforced Time Loop," Groundhog Day-style) is peppered with chronal paradoxes and
bureaucratic annoyances. As a creation, Yu represents all failed ambitions and
compromised dreams, his plight a symbolic statement of a generational quandary.
(Yu turned thirty-four years old this year.)
Yu has obviously ingested the vast body of classic time-travel SF, and he has formulated a consistent theory and practice of time travel, full of hopped-up jargon, which he uses to illustrate existential themes rather than produce action-adventure sequences. There are traces of Robert Sheckley, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, Barry Malzberg, and Philip K. Dick throughout these pages. But the book resembles nothing so much as a fresh approach to the tone of the late, great George Alec Effinger, whose novels What Entropy Means to Me and The Wolves of Memory practically defined this voice.
But
perhaps the best description of Yu's book is the one he applies to his
malfunctioning pocket universe: "the reality portions of [Minor Universe
31] are concentrated in an inner core, with science fiction wrapped around
it."
Satirical SF: When we are introduced to
an exuberantly manic post-scarcity milieu perched paradoxically atop the
oppressed crumbling ruins of an indigent planet, with one industry or
preoccupation reigning supreme, we know ourselves to be firmly in the
quintessential Galaxy magazine mode
of science fiction satire, exemplified most famously by Pohl & Kornbluth's
classic The Space Merchants. Once
identified by Kingsley Amis in his critical study New Maps of Hell as practically the whole raison d'être of SF, the mode has lately fallen out of popularity,
although talented folks such as the writers of the animated series Futurama, Max Barry (Jennifer Government) and Christopher
Moore (Fluke) continue to plow the
pasture profitably.
Now
comes a bright and witty new practitioner of this honorable mode of
speculatively savaging humanity's foibles. Jon Armstrong has archly labeled his
own work "fashionpunk," since it takes the whole daft scene connected
with haute couture -- media overkill, celebrities, status and wealth -- and rakes it
over the coals by way of absurdist amplification.
In
Armstrong's debut novel Grey we were
introduced to a crazed yet consistent future in which clothes literally make
the man -- especially our hero, Michael Rivers, a nineteen-year-old airhead in
thrall to his corporate image, who eventually learns to rebel. Company mergers
here are facilitated by the ritual marriage and public deflowering of scions. A
private automated highway literally encircles the midsection of the planet. Press
conferences are vast media orgies. And draped elegantly over everything,
beautiful smart fabrics conceal bodily and spiritual ugliness.
Grey smartly followed the time-tested
template of many such dystopian tales, using an ignorant member of the elite as
focal point and dragging him down for a visceral education into the muck and
mire. In the new book,Yarn, Armstrong decides to tell
the flipside of the story: the rise of a peon to these synthetically uplifted
heights.
We
have already met protagonist Tane Cedar in Grey,
where he served as exclusive tailor and fashion designer to the privileged,
including Michael Rivers. But now we get his whole life story, as backdrop to
an adventure being experienced by the ascended Cedar, which involves the
fabric-cum-drug known as Xi. Born as a "slub," one of the serfs who
toil in the vast corn plantations that support the economy, Cedar mounts the
social and artistic ladder rung by bloody rung, until he becomes the figure we
met in Grey. Along the way, we get
further revelations into this Lady Gaga-inspired future, where the
saleswarriors of Seattlehama battle for market share and allegiances are as
disposable as underwear.
Half
the fun of Armstrong's books is the lush, ornate, rococco language, worthy of a
Russell Hoban or Anthony Burgess. The neologisms are captivating, the dialogue
is both sophisticated and rude, and the descriptive passages are boldly visual.
In toto, these books do something brilliant which I had always half-believed
was possible, but which I never dreamed of actually seeing. They replicate in
prose the logically insane and hyperbolic graphic novels of Jodorowsky and
Moebius and their collaborators: The
Incal/The Metabarons/The Technopriests. It's proof that in the right hands,
style is substance.
Hardcore SF: Language maven William
Safire was one of the first to recognize the birth of retronyms. This term is applied in cases when a word that was once
perfectly descriptive all by itself needs a retrofit to acknowledge changing
circumstances. For centuries the word "clock" said everything. But
then with the arrival of digital technology, we had to say "analog
clock" when we meant the original kind with hands and static face.
So
it is with "science fiction." Once upon a time, that unadorned term
encompassed the whole smallish field. But with the proliferation of sub-genres,
readers and critics have had to use retronyms. "Hardcore SF" refers
to the formerly ubiquitous kind of tale that employs the core genre conceits: robots
and rayguns, interstellar empires and starships, gadgets and extrapolations. (Somewhat
confusingly, what has been dubbed "hard SF" is a different beast,
admitting only rigorously scientific ideas, and not dodgy apparatus such as
teleportation and psi powers that hardcore SF gleefully employs.) Once the
dominant mode, hardcore SF is now just another specialty, its practitioners
rather like twenty-first-century poets still writing sonnets and sestinas.
But
such allegiances to noble old forms often inspire great craft and commensurate
rewards. Greg Bear is one contemporary master of the old ways, and in Hull Zero Three he gives the
generation starship theme -- crystallized beautifully by Robert Heinlein in 1941's
"Universe" -- a vigorous makeover.
Bear's
protagonist, an amnesiac who eventually assumes the name Teacher after his
programmed function, wakes to find himself in a "sick Ship." This
enormous and complex interstellar vessel, intended to crawl at a fraction of
lightspeed across the galaxy to plant a new colony, has been mysteriously
damaged. Embarking on a dangerous odyssey of knowledge gathering, Teacher and
his shifting posse of oddball companions must battle the deadline of
disintegration to salvage what they can of the mission.
Bear
brilliantly evokes all of the heart-racing thrills typically associated with
the classic hardcore SF trope of exploring a "Big Dumb Object." Savvy
readers will flash on such past milestones as Algis Budrys's Rogue Moon,
Robert Silverberg's The Man in the Maze, Larry
Niven's Ringworld and
Arthur Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. A sly
allusion to Heinlein's benchmark generation-ship tale occurs when a pair of
clones realize that two heads are better than one: Heinlein's protagonist,
Joe-Jim, literally wore two heads on one body. And the traditional riff of
"conceptual breakthrough," in which larger and larger frames of
knowledge keep opening up, is played deftly. In a neat stylistic maneuver,
Teacher's language skills keep pace on the page with his growing understanding.
But
even grander than all this is the subtle parable of Teacher's plight: born
naked and unwitting into a dangerous environment, in which only cooperation and
curiosity ensure survival and success. Isn't this a simple description of the
human condition? Teacher's journey, like Buddha's, is universal. And even if he
experiences moments of Beckett-like despair and anger, he overcomes them with
logic, hope, and ingenuity. What better formulation for the guiding attitude of
science fiction, hardcore or otherwise? Writers like Bear prove that SF still
has some tomorrows left, even as 2010 joins the pile of yesterdays.